It  was at Harry’s downtown where I came face to face with Mark McGwire.  Harry’s features a pink stucco exterior rimmed at the top with a neon strip.  It boasts a pricey dinner menu, lots of sweet cars getting valet, and huge deck out back with hands down the best beer garden view of our city(backdrop: Gateway Arch).  Some high octane cover band, usually named with an adjective followed by a plural flower(shrinking violets, frozen roses, big daisys) delivers seventies and eighties pop rock to grease the broads for the divorced male drivers of the sweet cars who wear dark tans, gaudy watches, and own no soul.

Mid-May or early june 2000 gorgeous Saturday night and I’d met up with a gang of good time friends.  Drinks, smokes, and laughs.  We staked a table early at the north end of the huge patio near a door and good times never seemed so good.  The Cardinal’s had won earlier in the day and the pleased crowd packed in near discomfort.  Not long after a crew of waitresses came down and repossessed the two tables between the good times and the door, a buzz traveled, “McGwire’s here, McGwire’s here.”  

He came in with a crew of average middle aged dudes and they assumed seats at the two tables.  McGwire sat between the tables, back against a brick wall, facing the mob.  Bud lights were delivered.  There he was.  The baseball player whose image I’d postered onto my wall as a kid.  I spent considerable time, hope, and money in pursuit of his picture on small pieces of card board and there he was with a bud light.  I prayed to my God this man would be a Cardinal someday and it was answered.  A little later than I’d wished but it happened.  I’m a sports fan; Cardinal fan.  Need I color more than, MOVE OVER BABE RUTH?

So, an hour or so passed and we recovered our own party from his arrival.  I stood face to face speaking with ‘hot girl from high school’, Laura H.(NOT Cindy Crawford, but commonly compared attributes).  We stood in the tight crowd laughing about old times when to my left someone said, “excuse me.”   It was McGwire.  I was in shock.  Laura and I parted he slid between us facing me.  It was so crowded he couldn’t go anywhere.  We were almost chest to chest so I asked, “Can I get a hand shake?”  He brought his hand up and looked at me down to my feet.  We shook awkwardly as we were so close, he squinted funny and says, “You need to wear a bigger shirt.”

He ripped me.  I was stunned but somehow I coolly responded by tugging at the swoosh on the sleeve of his big girly night-size aqua blue t-shirt and said, “Oh, yeah, well I think you need to wear a smaller shirt.”  He was trapped by the crowd, only to turn and smile. I said, “Hey, I didn’t hit seventy home runs last year,  I got a show my #### off to the ladies.”  He grinned again and as he stepped away I said, “You know, I’m gonna burn this shirt since you said that.”  “Your gonna burn it?” I nodded; he laughed and broke away.  I was freaked.  My friends thought it was real funny.

But I didn’t burn it.  I went home and pulled out my baseball card collection and turned to his page.  Only one page.  I dumped most of his stock for a loss during his injury years. The ’87 Donruss Highlights across the top, various rookies around the outside.  In the middle, the ’88 score with the purple border; when this card came out I suffered the notion it would be like the ’84 Mattingly Donruss.  For it, I traded a package that included a 1970 Reggie Jackson and ‘83 Topps Boggs rookie.  It was the worst trade I ever made. 

So I tacked this sheet upside down to my voodoo board, lit candles, and everyday I rolled bones wishing he would pay.  It wasn’t but a couple weeks later that tendonitis flared up.  It never went away and McGwire stank every day after that.  Albert came up with a bigger pair of shoes.  My #### are still real and McGwire was last seen wearing a bra in Washington.  It’s Friday night and I’m gonna wear that shirt.